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“I think that was all of them” Zeb grunted, kicking the lifeless body of the Stormtrooper at his feet away. “Are we all okay?”
“I’m fine” Rex called back, holstering his blasters as he joined Zeb. “These Stormtroopers don’t have what it takes to take down a clone.”
“I still don’t get how we knew this was a trap and yet still walked right into it” Ezra complained. “Whose idea was that anyway?”
“Mine” Alexsandr said. He was the only one of the group who hadn’t lowered his weapons yet, blaster in hand as he checked behind every crate in the room. Thorough as always.
“Er, it could be me, but… aren’t you usually the one telling us not to do reckless krayt spit like that?” Sabine remarked. “’Walk right in’ was supposed to be our tactic, not yours.”
“It’s actually Thrawn’s” Alexsandr remarked, giving the room one last one-over before deciding that there were really no hidden Imperials here anymore and putting his blaster away. He kept his hand on the knife strapped to his thigh, Zeb noticed.
“Oh so we’re taking the blue asshole’s advice now?” Ezra asked.
“We do on strategy” Alexsandr replied calmly. “I’ve seen him do it before, know a trap has been laid but springing it anyway. I mean, come on, Bridger, what had you expected, that the Empire would just let us have these supplies without a fight? Of course it would be a trap.”
Sabine, having opened the first crate, whistled softly as she peered in. “Oooh, I can do a lot of damage with these babies” she said approvingly. “But why wouldn’t we just sneak in and surprise them?”
“Because this was a trap laid specifically for you. They would have expected dirty play. By walking right in the easy way, we took away their element of surprise and made them nervous as they kept waiting for us to unveil our ‘real’ strategy.”
With one fluent move, Alexsandr used his knife to break a lock on another crate and Zeb lost track of the conversation for a second. The former Imperial had been everywhere at once during the fight, charging into the battle in front of everyone else, trying to protect all of them. He had been an army on his own, whipping out his knives to swiftly decapitate one trooper and immediately shooting another off of Zeb across the battlefield. Zeb usually never had trouble staying focused in a fight, but this time he’d had some narrow saves because he had found himself staring in awe at his friend.
“I think we could use this” Alexsandr said, pushing a crate up to Zeb. The top was off, and Zeb peered in: it was filled with medical supplies; mostly bandages and med kits stamped with the Republic logo.
“Nice haul” he agreed, clapping Alexsandr on his shoulder.
Alexsandr hissed slightly, twitching before quickly recomposing himself.
Immediately alarmed, Zeb looked him over. “You’re hurt” he said, lowering his voice – Alexsandr hated showing what he perceived as vulnerability in front of others.
“It’s nothing” Alexsandr said, predictably, tugging his shoulder out of Zeb’s reach.
Well, that won’t do.
Taking his arm, Zeb pretty much forced him to sit down on one of the smaller crates.
“We don’t have time to waste on this” Alexsandr protested, though he did allow Zeb to carefully take his jacket off of him. “We need to get as many supplies aboard the Ghost as possible.”
“Always so focused on the task at hand” Zeb chuckled to himself, though the laugh died in his throat as he saw Alexsandr’s shoulder.
The shot was superficial, but it still needed treatment, despite Alexsandr’s attempts to get back up.
“You’ve gotta be more careful, Aleks” Zeb said.
“It’s nothing, I’m fine” Alexsandr muttered.
“Krayt spit” Zeb replied, taking a tube of bacta out of the crate and unscrewing it.
Alexsandr hissed again as Zeb starting dabbing some of the ointment on the wound, but otherwise stayed silent, looking away.
“You can’t just run into battle like that” Zeb said. “Without protection.”
Alexsandr opened his mouth to react, but Sabine, walking past with a crate of blasters, was quicker.
“You should get some armour, you know” she said, indicating the dead Stormtroopers still scattered around them. “Enough lying around.”
“No thank you” Alexsandr snorted. “Trooper armour is absolutely worthless.”
“Then why are they wearing it?” Zeb asked, confused.
Alexsandr shrugged. “Uniformity. The psychological effect of thinking they’re protected.”
“Is that why you never wore that much armour in the first place?” Zeb asked.
“It wasn’t beskar,” Alexsandr replied, nodding at Sabine’s retreating form, “but my cuirass was pretty strong. The Empire is more careful with their elite agents; they don’t want to waste that money on cannon fodder.”
Zeb cringed; it always pained him to hear Alexsandr talk so nonchalantly about the cruelty and depersonalisation of the Empire; as if it were normal. Which it had been to him, Zeb realised. He had hardly ever known anything else.
“Or you could take some clone armour;” Rex, having joined them with his own trolley stacked with crates, said, “ours was actually good stuff. We’re here now anyway.” He pushed his trolley towards them, and now Zeb saw that the crates were filled with discarded new clone armour. “You’re pretty much the physical shape of a clone. Little taller, and perhaps thinner, but it’s adaptable.”
“Huh” Alexsandr said thoughtfully. “Not a bad idea, actually.”
He searched through the crates as the others resumed their efforts of moving the rest of it into the Ghost, taking out parts and comparing them, slowly piecing together a set of armour.
“A, a captain’s pauldron” Rex remarked, passing him once again. “Wanna show off your rank so badly?”
“Not particularly” Alexsandr replied. “I just remember looking at the various types of clone armour back on Coruscant and liking this type most.”
Zeb stopped for a moment to look at what he had together already, mentally comparing it to the holos Rex had shown him of his legion during the Clone Wars. “Shouldn’t you have that skirt thing too?”
“Kamas?” Alexsandr corrected him distractedly. “Yes, I’m looking for them.”
“We have loaded everything we can use on the Ghost, time to go” Kanan’s voice sounded over their comms. It didn’t surprise Zeb; the last trolley of crates he had delivered to the Ghost had already barely fit into it.
“We’re not taking the rest of the armour?” Ezra, who had been eyeing the crates as well, said.
“The Rebellion is not strong enough for confrontational physical warfare” Alexsandr explained, gathering the pieces of armour he had collected in his arms. “Our priorities should lie with medical and relief supplies, and sabotage and espionage material.”
Ezra shrugged, following the rest of them onboard the Ghost, throwing the crates still on the surface a regretful look.
“Aleks, you really gotta be more careful” Zeb said softly, pulling him away from the others a bit just before they reached the boarding ramp.
Alexsandr rolled his eyes. “I told you, I’m fine.”
“You’re not, and I’m not just talking about this battle” Zeb insisted. “You’re always the first to charge in, the one to jump in the path of a blast meant for someone else, always putting yourself at risk in someone else’s place.”
“I’m skilled, I know what I’m doing” Alexsandr shrugged, turning to enter the ship and end the conversation.
Zeb hurried to catch up to him. “For someone who was so hard to kill you have remarkable little regard for your own life” he muttered.
“My apologies” Alexsandr said drily. But the corners of his mouth twitched upwards, and Zeb’s heart melted into a puddle, pooling hotly somewhere below his gut despite his remark not having been meant jokingly.
As Hera swiftly manoeuvred them off of the planet and into hyperspace, Alexsandr used the floor of the common room to lay out all of the armour he collected. It didn’t take long for the others to assemble in the room as well, subtly or openly watching what he was doing.
“Funny, that is almost exactly what my full armour set used to look like” Rex commented. “Except I welded some gen 1 elements into it.”
“It certainly looks sturdy enough” Alexsandr said, getting up to stand next to him and look at the entire thing.
Rex nodded. “Now you just gotta make it yours”
“What do you mean?”
“I know the Empire doesn’t value individuality, with their bland Stormtroopers, but to us clones it was of the highest value” Rex said. “So we painted our armour, as well as developed our own styles of facial hair and got tattoos to be as unique as we could be considering we all shared a face.”
“Well, you’ve got the unique facial hair down” Ezra snickered, grinning at Alexsandr.
“Another nod to the clones on Coruscant” Alexsandr reacted, unfazed.
That surprised Zeb. “Wait. Seriously?”
“Kriff, that’s huh… That’s nice” Rex said, clearly moved by this. “Hadn’t expected this amount of respect for clones from an ex-Imperial.”
Ezra groaned.
“What?” Zeb said. It took him quite him some effort not to growl at the kid. Alexsandr made him feel so… protective sometimes.
“If he’s got a good reason to look like that, we can’t really mock him for it anymore” Ezra said, lower lip falling forward into a pout.
“I’m certain you will manage to come up with other things to mock me with” Alexsandr reacted drily.
“Hey!” Zeb exclaimed before he could stop himself, indignance on Alexsandr’s behalf flaring up inside him.
Rex just laughed.
“So do you want me to paint your armour for you?” Sabine asked, in a clear attempt to get Ezra to shut up.
It worked; the Jedi’s attention was back on Alexsandr, who had knelt back down at his armour to adjust something. “No, that’s okay, I can do it myself.”
Rex sat down on the bench next to him. “What’s gonna be your primary colour? We picked ours based on our battalions, but that’s not really an option here.”
Alexsandr hummed thoughtfully, pursing his lips as he stared at the armour, pondering it. His hair gleamed faintly in the artificial lights and his eyes were soft. Beautiful.
“How about gold?” Zeb blurted out.
“Gold?” Alexsandr inquired, looking up at him in surprise, those gorgeous golden eyes boring into his – somehow the former agent always looked like he was scrutinising everything around him.
It made Zeb feel self-conscious all of a sudden, and he found himself rubbing his neck in embarrassment. “Yeah, I… I think it’d suit you.”
Alexsandr nodded thoughtfully, turning back towards his armour, accepting the paint and brushes Sabine handed him.
He spent the rest of the hyperspace jump on the floor, working on the armour. And Zeb found himself staring, unable to keep his eyes off of him, in awe of his steady hand as he worked – though not an artist like Sabine, Alexsandr was very skilled at repairing and altering electronics, and he was putting that control over the tiniest movements of his hand to full use.
“It’s not going to be much of a disguise like that” Ezra, looking on as well, commented.
“It’s not meant to be” Alexsandr returned. “Sabine, would you like to add your starbird here?”
“I mean, even Zeb is less obvious, with his colour” Ezra went on as Sabine took her airbrush and joined Alexsandr.
“Hey!” Zeb growled.
Alexsandr looked at him thoughtfully. “The stripes do make you less conspicuous” he observed, tilting his head slightly in a way that made all conscious thought disappear from Zeb’s brain. “Like camouflage.”
“See?” Zeb bit at Ezra, who just shrugged.
Sabine meanwhile had finished her work and handed the airbrush back to Alexsandr, who immediately bent over the armour again, working on it for a little while more until he finally stepped away.
“I think it’s done.”
The pieces were lying scattered around the room now, and it was hard to get the whole picture. “Well, come, on, put it on!” Sabine said what Zeb was thinking.
“Oh” Alexsandr mumbled, freezing for a fraction of a second as he was gathering the pieces. “Er… hang on.”
And Zeb understood. Alexsandr was still quite far from being comfortable with his body, his image of himself severely warped by years in Imperial propaganda and service and ISB training, employ and torture; of course he would be reluctant to change in front of an audience. “You can use my room.”
Alexsandr gave him a grateful look before disappearing to change, once again melting Zeb’s heart and sending his heartbeat through the roof.
A few minutes later he stepped back wearing his new armour. The sound of his footsteps – still in Imperial rhythm – alerted Zeb on his presence, but he couldn’t get a word of greeting out his throat as his mouth fell open and his heart stuttered to a halt.
Alexsandr was looking absolutely breathtaking, the gold and brownish red perfectly complimenting his freckled skin and golden hair in an intricate design that featured stripes in a very familiar pattern.
Those are my stripes. He’s wearing my stripes.
Zeb could feel his fur puffing up again, the warm pool in his gut no longer liquid but blazing, a raging fire.
“That’s gorgeous, Alexsandr!” Sabine said. “Great design, love the linework.”
“Yeah, that… that suits you really well” Ezra agreed, uncharacteristically positive.
“Clever integration of Zeb’s stripes” Sabine went on, grinning at Zeb, who rubbed his neck and glared at her.
“Ezra had a point about the stealth capacities” Alexsandr replied.
Rex, who had fallen strangely silent, walked up to Alexsandr. “Your… your helmet” he said.
Alexsandr handed it to him so he could take a closer look. “I thought it would be a nice nod to have the Fulcrum symbol on it.”
“Ahsoka” Rex said softly, holding it so delicately he was almost cradling it.
“What?” Alexsandr replied, looking confused.
“The Fulcrum symbol is based on Ahsoka’s facial markings” Zeb explained, realising that Alexsandr wouldn’t know this; as far as he knew, the two had never met each other, not even on opposite sides.
Alexsandr hid it well, but Zeb knew him well enough to see past his neutral response to understand that this scared him, afraid as he was to misstep. “Oh, my apologies” he said, only a slight widening of his eyes indicating his true feelings. “I’ll take it off.”
“No, don’t” Rex reacted. There were tears in his eyes. “It’s a nice tribute, both to her and your own actions as Fulcrum.”
And Zeb understood the unspoken message behind it. Rex knew, too, saw through Alexsandr’s façade, saw the broken and uncertain ex-Imperial behind it. And just like Zeb, Rex wanted to show him that he belonged here, that he was trusted an accepted. That his time as Fulcrum had made a difference.
Alexsandr nodded uncertainly.
“I just hadn’t expected to ever see it on a helmet again” Rex muttered quietly.
Zeb wondered what he meant with again, but there was something in the clone’s demeanour that made that he didn’t dare ask. Looking around at the others he saw similar confusion, but nobody asked the question, not even Ezra, and the silence stretched on.
Eventually Rex gave Alexsandr his helmet back, smiling at him. “It looks good on you” he said warmly. “You look like a trooper. Like a clone.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment” Alexsandr reacted. He and Rex shared a look of understanding, and suddenly it struck Zeb that the two of them shared the experience of being Imperial defectors, of being nothing but a number and having to fight to be something else. There were a lot of differences, of course, but also a lot more similarities than Zeb had initially thought.
No wonder Alexsandr got along with Rex as one of the only persons within the Rebellion he seemed to actively enjoy spending time with.
The clone still looked sad, his usual smile absent, clearly lost in thought.
“What was it like, to serve in the Clone Wars with Ahsoka Tano?” Alexsandr asked him, in a surprisingly soft and thoughtful way. Inviting; comforting. Zeb’s heart nearly burst in his chest. He knew the former agent had it in him.
“She was the best commander the 501st could have wished for” Rex said, smiling wistfully. “But you should have seen the snippy child she was when she just got dropped on us…"
Epilogue
Zeb was observing Alexsandr, and Alexsandr was observing Rex. The Clone Wars veteran had for once donned his full armour again, and was now practising close combat manoeuvres, showing his friend how the armour moved. They were outside, and Rex had made it into an open sparring session, inviting anyone brave enough to join him in the ring.
So far he had wiped the floor with all of them.
A crowd had assembled by now, filled with admiration; apparently people hadn’t expected the old clone to still pack a punch like that. Alexsandr’s gaze was more focused, however, his eyes never leaving Rex as he occasionally mirrored a move of his at the side.
“Come on, Alexsandr,” Rex called, as his last challenger, a young human who had formally joined the Rebellion shortly after the Spectres had landed on Yavin 4, limped out of the ring in defeat, “let’s really test that armour of yours.”
“No, no, that’s okay, I’m just watching” Alexsandr replied.
Rex raised an eyebrow at him. “That’s an order, Captain.”
Zeb usually hated it when anyone ordered Alexsandr around, even his superiors; stars knew the guy had already been through too much of that, and Zeb didn’t want him to experience that ever again. But he didn’t miss the little smile on Alexsandr’s face that answered Rex’s broad smirk as he joined the clone in the ring.
A special friendship had developed between Alexsandr and Rex, Zeb had noticed. It seemed like Rex viewed Alexsandr like one of his brothers, a fellow clone in spirit if not in actual looks, and Alexsandr for his part clearly found comfort in the familiarity of Rex’s military background. They were kind of similar, in a way.
Zeb was happy for Alexsandr that he finally seemed to have made a friend, but that didn’t mean he didn’t also feel a slight pang of jealousy towards Rex. Alexsandr had been his, in a way, ever since Bahryn; the ruthless ISB-agent he got to switch allegiances and spy for the Rebellion. The lost, scared ex-Imperial only he could prod into eating something or taking a break when nobody else could.
He knew he was being irrational. He was still with length the person Alexsandr spent most of his time with if he wasn’t working, and even if he was. And he knew that Alexsandr wasn’t his, and that it was good for the man to have more than one friend, more than one person he could rely on and feel comfortable with.
Right now Zeb supposed he was simply jealous of Rex and Alexsandr’s physical proximity to each other.
Other Rex’s earlier opponents, Alexsandr was evenly matched with him, and the two of them were going through rapid attacks and blocks, neither of them able to gain the upper hand on the other. A lot of people had sauntered over to watch by now, and Zeb could understand why: this was probably one of the highest level sparring sessions many of them had ever seen, the formal military training of both clearly visible in the cleanness of their movements, the preciseness of each blow.
It did look impressive, two men in full clone trooper armour almost dancing around each other. The only part of it they had both foregone was their helmets, allowing them to see each other’s faces. Alexsandr’s longer hair was rapidly becoming dishevelled and wet with sweat, strewn around his face as he moved. In combination with his absolute power in the ring it made him extremely attractive, and a significant part of the rebels watching the match was mostly swooning over him.
Zeb was not above that himself.
“Enjoying the view?” Hera, coming to stand next to him, asked, a small smile on her face.
“Yeah, I like seeing him like this” Zeb said.
Hera’s smile grew more smug.
“In his element, I mean!” Zeb added quickly. “Happy. Not as lost.”
At first, after his defection, the Rebellion had kept Alexsandr on base, wanting to give him time and space to process everything he had gone through before sending him out again. But by now Zeb had realised that Alexsandr shone in life-and-death situations during actual missions; he needed to be in control, to have something to do. Something to focus that laser-sharp mind of his on.
Next to him, Hera’s expression had gone soft as she observed the former Imperial in the ring. “Yeah” she said. “It suits him.”
Her gaze quickly shot to Zeb, who immediately rubbed his neck in embarrassment. She didn’t say a single word, and yet she couldn’t have been clearer.
You can make him happy like that, too.